Monday, July 30, 2012

Congratulations to a British prostitute for setting a standard for moral clarity well beyond the norm for news stories. Becky Adams, a retired hooker and madam, recently said that she would not object if her 16-year-old daughter followed in her professional footsteps. "At least prostitution is an honest profession," she said. "I'd much rather she work as an escort than a banker."

Many Penn State critics feared that the university would be given the "death penalty" for collaborating in Jerry Sandusky's sexual predations (it wasn't). What constitutes the "death penalty?" Giving Penn State a year off from participation in football in order to reassess the proper role of football in its educational mission. Wow. That certainly sounds like a death penalty. The equivalent in a murder case would be to give the killer a one year jail sentence - to think things over - and then allow him to return to his personal life. Anyone think that that definition of "death penalty" would win broad acceptance?

Meanwhile, Monsignor William J. Lynn, found guilty of concealing child sexual abuse by sending former priest Edward V. Avery to serve in a parish without warning of his history of such abuse, said he was sorry for allowing, in judge M. Teresa Sarmina's words, "monsters in clerical garb" to "destroy the souls of children." Lynn claimed he did his best to prevent abuse, but lacked the authority to do more. The lack of authority stems directly from Rome's belief that sexual predation is a private matter best dealt with by healing and prayer. According to the Catholic Church, Jerry Sandusky's only crime was choosing the wrong profession.

After Iraq suffered 40 coordinated attacks in 15 cities, leaving more than 100 people dead, the Wall Street Journal editorialized that "the U.S. abdication in Iraq" had left Washington with "little leverage" while an "arc of instability" threatened to form through Syria and Iraq into the Persian Gulf. Instability is a code-word meaning insubordination. When Washington foments violence in pursuit of regime change its media lapdogs never describe it as instability. Quite the contrary. But when violence is used against U.S. foreign policy, or against those who have collaborated with its bloody interventions, the corporate media choruses that "instability" needs to be brought under control, thus laying the ideological groundwork for further U.S. meddling.

The upshot is that the Wall Street Journal and all right-thinking policy wonks in the major media believe the world belongs to Washington and its corporate backers by natural right. That this conviction is manifestly contradictory to anything deserving the name democracy simply can't be perceived by the media czars.

President Obama recently remarked that, "If you've got a business, you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen." Predictably, this sparked an uproar. Clarice Feldman in AmericanThinker.com accused the president of being "utterly divorced from the majority of Americans," who, he insisted, believe in "hard work, self-reliance, and individual achievement."

Much ado about nothing, as usual. Individual achievement, no matter how great, absolutely depends on cultural inheritance, which includes the contributions of government. On the other hand, culture cannot evolve without the genius of personality, which centralized government tends to stifle. This rather obvious insight carries no implications about voting for either Romney or Obama, two outstanding mediocrities whose only genius lies in manipulating the electorate into endorsing suicidal policies.

Veteran Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, on trial for alleged racial profiling by his department, was confronted with his past statement that being compared to the Ku Klux Klan was "an honor." Liberals seem not to realize that the rhetorical excess lies more with them than it does with the embattled sheriff. That Arpaio is guilty of abusing people is not in doubt. But to compare rounding up illegal immigrants by law enforcement agents with terrorism by lynching is grotesque.

Toni Morrison despairs over the infantile state of corporate entertainment (misnamed popular culture), complaining "I really want some meaning. You have to navigate just to find something that has nourishment. What do you [get] in place of nourishment? It's usually junk. Junk food or junk clothes or junk ideas." Or junk politics. Morrison herself is on record for stating that Bill Clinton was our "first black president."

Crippling U.S. sanctions on Iran have sent the price of chicken and other commodities through the roof. Chicken has tripled in price over the past year. So the chief of Iran's police forces recently announced that images of people eating chicken can no longer be shown on T.V., because such a "class gap" might touch off a popular revolt. Iranian police also shut down 87 coffee shops in Tehran "for not following Islamic values." Max Fisher in the Atlantic commented that this is what happens when a government tries "to maintain a stable society without giving up its nuclear program."

Incredible. Iran is allowed to have a nuclear energy program, so what needs to be criticized first and foremost are the sanctions. Secondly, in a situation where only rich people can afford chicken, ANY country might be on the verge of revolt, with or without a nuclear energy program. Fisher is simply making himself an instrument of the Israel fanatics, who want to extend Jewish hegemony in the Middle East via regime change in Iran. Don't let them.

Taking Mitt Romney to task for not mounting an effective defense of outsourcing, David Brooks praised the practice as a good method of keeping a company "efficient and dynamic" in a global economy. Michael Tanner in NationalReview.com had a similar take, saying that Romney should publicly embrace outsourcing while offering "a full-throated defense of capitalism." Because of outsourcing U.S. businesses make more money and U.S. consumers buy cheaper goods, and "it's time for Mitt Romney to stand up and say so."

Yes, companies can achieve remarkable profit efficiency by throwing Americans out of work and inducing them to shop for cheap foreign goods with their unemployment benefits. So what? Making this the proud centerpiece of U.S. economic policy is simply national suicide, not that big business has any reason to care about such trivialities. But the rest of us ought to bear in mind that BOTH Democrats and Republicans favor exporting the U.S. productive base in order to save on labor costs, American workers be damned. And throwing a strip of paper in a ballot box from time to time will do nothing to stop this.

A slightly more novel approach on outsourcing was taken by Clive Crook in The Atlantic, who says outsourcing is "good for workers in developing countries." Right. The maquiladora industry south of the border is the envy of workers everywhere.

Enough already with the "polio is better than cancer" truisms of crackpot realists. What we need is not more free market mythology, but a full throated attack on capitalism, not later, but now.

Source:

"The Week - All You Need to Know About Everything That Matters," August 3, 2012

------Michael K. Smith is the author of "Portraits of Empire" and "The Madness of King George," both from Common Courage Press.

Monday, July 23, 2012

As Republicans stride in the direction of hard-core fascism and
Democrats mince toward a soft-core police state, America endures a campaign with
no substance allowed to interfere with corporate capital’s electoral show. Unless
the Green Party attracts citizen attention by adhering to the substance of
democratic ideals that contrast with the political pimping of the major parties
, the people will face endless television mudslinging battles between political
pornographers trying to entice them to vote for a lesser evil. As usual.

Unmentioned by the mainstream candidates and their media paparazzi
are the crises that are regular parts of capital’s economic anarchy but are
occurring with a regularity that not only frightens the majority enduring the
losses but even some of the minority collecting the profits.

Present systemic chaos is due in part to the deregulation
craze which has brought us closer to a pre-depression state of totally
uncontrolled markets. A return to past New Deal/Keynesian control - which was
never more than a way to forestall total collapse by making taxpayers the
investors of last resort – is the argument entertained by supporters of the
system who haven’t yet seen the handwriting on the wall. But even if that
return to the past achieves lesser evil victory in November, it will be short
lived.

Capitalism has radically changed, not in essence but in the
way it presently extracts profits at society’s loss.

The financial sectors which replaced manufacturing as
primary players in the vast casino we are taught to think of as democracy and
free markets are operating at a speed that cannot be turned back to the
industrial era. Behind the wealth walls of this gated community , privateers circulate
currencies which do not represent physical product or tangible goods but exist
only as speculative electronic blips. These impulses of immaterialism are borrowed,
loaned, rented and sold by the trillions, and then re-rented, re-borrowed,
re-loaned and re-sold in an endless daisy chain ponzi scheme of superstition
based gambling practiced in an electronic church that makes the supernatural seem
embedded in solid rock by comparison.

This massive scam, rooted in past industry but only now nearing
a collapse with the blinding speed of its transactions in the ether, has taken
us from millions lost in the 1930s market crash, to billions lost in the 1990s
market bust, to trillions lost in the 21st century market breakdown. So far.

And even more
critical than these fanatic monetary matters are the environmental threats that
forecast a deadly future for humanity if we do not transform our method, means
and purpose of survival.

How long can this go on without a collapse that doesn’t only
curse tens of millions with hardship and suffering in capital’s usual fashion,
but plunges billions into simultaneously experienced horror?

Part of the salvation of profit and loss economics has been capital’s
ability to keep majority suffering on the fringes of society while trickling
down enough wealth so that many workers could achieve a middle class life
style, mostly dependent on debt but enabling the purchase of enough creature
comforts to make it all seem worthwhile. But as growing numbers sink below that
standard and even descend into poverty, how can mind managers continue urging
consumption of physical and mental commodities if people don’t have the money
to buy all the material waste and are running out of patience with all the immaterial
torture?

When so many are going broke, becoming mad , or openly
rebelling, what’s a minority to do to maintain its power?

The increasing number of crises are being dealt with by more
obscene financing for war while cutting public budgets in order to further protect
private profits. We are expected to accept less and less as a society and get
less and less as individuals, while we pay more and more to endanger ourselves,
our future and the life of the planet itself. All too slowly, we seem to have begun
seriously questioning this madness.

Uncritical faith is necessary to perpetuate any myth or
legend, but when it fails, so does the legend or myth. Recurring breakdowns and
legions of new sufferers are
causing many more to question what was previously perceived as acceptable or inevitable
reality. Once that reality is understood to mean that we have no future if we
go on this way and in some cases are running out of a present, all bets are
off.

Belief in a deity can vanish when it doesn't answer prayers,
but faith in banks, always tenuously based on the authority of military power protecting
the vault , is beginning to disappear for material and not metaphysical
reasons. Scandals among the grossly rich minority rulers are getting worse and
encouraging more people to demand political but also economic change in the way
societies produce and distribute their wealth and where they stash their cash.
The idea of an unelected private minority
controlling majority public wealth, always a dim witted notion in an alleged
democratic system, is beginning to be seen as stupid as it always was.

When no one believes in or accepts the private bank as deity
and public ruler, its power isn’t there anymore. We haven’t reached that collective
consciousness yet , but we need to, and soon, before a future financial tsunami
makes all the present financial flooding seem trivial by comparison.

Democratic control of the economy can begin with public
banks investing in what majority society needs and not what minority billionaires
and their professional class servants want. If that seems too difficult to achieve,
then democracy is no longer a goal and we should just prepare for the worst.
Only our rulers and their most pessimistic, defeatist servants can possibly
want such a thing. People before profits; an idea whose time has come. Which
side are you on?

Sunday, July 22, 2012

The first African-American president in U.S. history, he displayed his attitude towards his African heritage by destroying Libya, the most modern and democratic country on the African continent, which boasted an average life span of 77 years and a literacy rate of 90%.

This policy was carried out using air and naval bombardments, Special Forces advisers, a mercenary army and client ex-patriots (slated to be the "new leaders"), and a multi-lateral coalition of European empire builders and Gulf state petrol-oligarchs. With sustained and massive air attacks (14,000 bombing raids) taking the place of an occupying army, Obama absurdly claimed that the horrendous massacre wasn't even a war, as though that could somehow make the bloodletting more tolerable.

Despite a huge propaganda offensive designed to convince the unwary that mercenary "rebels" toppled Qaddafi, the fact is that Qaddafi loyalists were only defeated by the combined air power of NATO, with the usual dubious legal justification, in yet another instance of imperial conquest of Africa. Meanwhile, the Libyan economy, from ports to irrigation systems to roads and hospitals, was utterly destroyed. Hundreds of thousands of sub-Saharan African workers and North African professionals were forced to flee as Washington's mercenary crew of fundamentalist, tribal, gangster, and opportunistic clan and neo-liberal forces set about carving up rival fiefdoms.

Obama's gender sensitivity was revealed to be a fraud. Women had more freedom under Qaddafi rule in Libya than in other Arab countries, and thanks to equal education, they held high office as a matter of course. Nevertheless, Obama's Secretary of State and champion of Western feminism Hillary Clinton giggled as she celebrated the torture and murder of the man who helped bring such policies about: "We came. We saw. He (Qaddafi) died." The best rejoinder was delivered by capitalist critic James Petras, who wrote that, "Only a brainless and morally depraved Hillary Clinton could sing the praises and dance a jig celebrating the victory of a knife-wielding sodomist torturing a captured president as 'a victory for democracy.'" Indeed. And Obama happily stands behind her.

Elsewhere on the foreign policy front the pattern was much the same. In Pakistan, Obama's drone warfare alienated virtually the entire population, killing a few "insurgent" commanders while engendering widespread hatred with his mass killing of civilians. In Iraq, he continued the completely unjustified U.S. occupation, adding to an already appalling death toll and withdrawing only when Iraqi resistance forced his hand. U.S. foreign policy critic William Blum aptly summed up the results of the Bush-Obama policy for the only people who count: Iraqis.

"The people of that unhappy land have lost everything - their homes, their schools, their electricity, their clean water, their environment, their neighborhoods, their mosques, their archaeology, their jobs, their careers, their professionals, their state-run enterprises, their physical health, their mental health, their health care, their welfare state, their women's rights, their religious tolerance, their safety, their security, their children, their parents, their past, their present, their future, their lives. More than half the population [is] either dead, wounded, traumatized, in prison, internally displaced, or in foreign exile. The air, soil, water, blood and genes drenched with depleted uranium [are bringing] the most awful of birth defects . . .. A river of blood runs alongside the Euphrates and Tigris, through a country that may never be put back together again."

The "sectarian violence" we hear of in Iraq is actually disguised imperial violence, even in the wake of the U.S. troop withdrawal. Extrajudicial executions and other crimes are being committed by Iraqi paramilitary forces recruited, trained, and armed by the United States. And should they fail to maintain Iraq in a mode of control Washington finds agreeable, Washington reserves the right to re-invade.

The Bush-Obama occupation represented a frontal assault on Iraqi civil society that ultimately killed at least 10% of the Sunni Arab population, driving about half of that population into exile or internal displacement. While Washington consistently tried to portray the violence as driven by religious extremism, it was in fact a conflict primarily between secular nationalist forces and Washington's imperial forces, with the former striving to expel all U.S. influence. Foreign occupation of the country was the real problem, not religious extremism.

And it's still not over. Tens of thousands of CIA operatives remain in Iraq, special forces units, hunter-killer squads, and ruthless private security details. This is what passes for peace in the era of the "homeland," a term Obama uses as freely as Bush did.

Turning to Afghanistan, those dangerous radicals at the Wall Street Journal editorialized on June 5, 2009 that "one benefit of the Obama Presidency is that it is validating much of George W. Bush's security agenda and foreign policy . . . [with] artfully repackaged versions of themes President Bush sounded with his freedom agenda." No surprise, then, that Obama won the support of John McCain and Karl Rove, as well as many other Republicans with his Afghan policy, which quickly threw 30,000 more troops into the sausage-grinder.

When a suicide bombing killed seven CIA agents working in Afghanistan some months later (December 30, 2009), President Obama glorified the fallen, calling them "part of a long line of patriots who have made great sacrifices for their fellow citizens, and for our way of life." As though the U.S. killing hundreds of thousands of Afghans going back to the Carter years were on such a basis justifiable. Madness.

In his Nobel Peace prize speech Obama unconvincingly laid out his differences with Dr. King and Gandhi vis-a-vis war policy: "We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth that we will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes." There will be times when nations - acting individually or in concert - will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified." He said he was "mindful of what Martin Luther King said in this same ceremony years ago: 'Violence never brings permanent peace. It solves no social problem, it merely creates new and more complicated ones.'" Obama said he would not be able to use Dr. King or Gandhi as his sole guides to being a good Commander in Chief, however. Afghanistan, he insisted, was a truly just war . . . "I face the world as it is, and cannot stand idle in the face of threats to the American people . . . Negotiations cannot convince al-Qaeda's leaders to lay down their arms. To say that force is sometimes necessary is not a call to cynicism - it is a recognition of history, the imperfections of man and the limits of reason."

But threats to the American people are greatly exaggerated, and the few that refer to anything real are a direct result of relentlessly abusive U.S. foreign and trade policies. And the plain fact is that Washington, not Al Qaeda, is the greatest threat to world peace, and by a wide margin. Nevertheless, Obama increased U.S. troop strength in Afghanistan to 100,000 (not counting mercenaries), where U.S. death squads are running rampant, having killed tens of thousands of civilians in the past decade.

According to the C.I.A., the U.S. government spends $10 billion a month to fight an estimated "50-75 Al Qaeda types in Afghanistan." According to Obama, this is a "smart war."

As for civil liberties, Obama signed an extension of the Patriot Act without a single reform. The provisions let the government, with approval from a special secret court, seize records without the owner's knowledge, conduct secret surveillance of "suspicious" people, and obtain secret roving wiretaps on people. Not surprisingly, therefore, wiretaps for oral, electronic or wire communications are at an all-time high under Obama.

Under Obama administration efforts to criminalize dissent and militarize the police, local police have been turned into SWAT teams accompanied by sound-blasting vehicles, helicopters, and special tanks. Protesters routinely suffer broken bones and numerous other injuries as they are smashed with truncheons, sprayed with chemical agents, hit with tear gas canisters, and blasted with ear-splitting sound machines. Meanwhile, Muslims don't even need to protest in order to get abused. The Obama administration has criminalized their very speech, indicting them for "supporting terrorists" in online comments, even in cases where there is no advocacy of violence.

The Obama administration condemned Wikileaks - the publication of accurate government documents detailing the lies told by U.S. government officials, the killing of civilians, the policy of torture in Iraq, information about who is held at Guantanamo (Cuban territory), cover ups of drone strikes, abuse of children, and even more damaging revelations. These were deliberately and absurdly misconstrued as constituting an attack on the United States. Washington continues to try to find ways to prosecute the publishers of Wikileaks. Obama personally defended the conditions of Bradley Manning's (solitary) confinement, who leaked thousands of government documents to Wikileaks. The government is charging Manning with espionage, which can bring the death penalty.

Among other civil liberties outrages are the following:

(1) The Obama administration has taken no steps to cut back on the cruel and unusual practice of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons, to which tens of thousands of U.S. prisoners are subject, nor the practice of confining supermax prisoners to their cells 23 out of every 24 hours.

(2) The CIA under Obama continues a longstanding policy of censorship of books published by former intelligence agents, the (partial) grounds being in one case (a memoir by former FBI agent Ali H. Soufan) that the book made the agency look bad.

(3) Obama has refused to release photos of U.S. soldiers cruelly abusing prisoners. There are hundreds of criminal investigations into such abuses by U.S. soldiers.

(4) Obama continues the Bush policy of calling for dismissal of cases brought against Washington on the part of tortured "detainees" on the grounds that a trial would disclose "state secrets."

(5) The Obama administration successfully requested that the Supreme Court allow the government to criminalize humanitarian aid and legal activities on the part of people giving advice or support to foreign organizations that are on the government list of terrorist organizations. The Obama administration's Solicitor General argued that, "When you help Hezbollah build homes, you are also helping Hezbollah build bombs." The court agreed that state security trumps the First Amendment. Of course, when U.S. taxpayers pay their taxes to help build roads, they are also helping the government build a vast array of weapons with which Washington commits acts of terrorism far greater in scale than anything attributable to Hizbollah, but that's not considered a crime.

(6) The Obama administration has targeted peace and justice activists and labor union organizers for FBI raids and judicial harassment, including Grand Jury subpoenas, this for exercising their constitutional right to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

(7) After promising to protect whistleblowers, Obama has prosecuted five whistleblowers under the Espionage Act, more than any other administration. He charged a National Security Agency advisor with 10 felonies under the Espionage Act for telling the press that the government was wasting hundreds of millions of dollars on ill-advised and failed projects. He also prosecuted former members of the CIA, the State Department, and the FBI.

(8) Obama continued Washington's longstanding support for torture. His much ballyhooed torture ban constitutes, at most, the elimination of a small minority of torture episodes carried out by Americans, while retaining the far more extensive torture operations carried out by foreigners under U.S. patronage. And by focusing only on torture in wartime (the dubious "war on terror") he diverts attention from the much vaster torture operations carried out by U.S. client states that are not at war, except with their own populations at the behest of Washington.

(9)Obama has endorsed and continued the most extremist Bush measures, including the "right" to torture anywhere except Guantanamo. Prisoners flown to Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan can be imprisoned indefinitely without rights, argues Obama. When a Bush-appointed federal judge handed down a decision rejecting this stance, the Obama administration announced that it would appeal the ruling.

(10) Obama claimed a unique right to jail people for life and execute U.S. citizens without formal charges or due process of law, and adopted Bush's secret military tribunals with minor modifications. And he invented new ways of denying habeas corpus.

(11) Secretary of State Clinton has determined that the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and FARC (Colombia) "threaten U.S. national security, foreign policy, or economic interests," a finding not reviewable by the courts. And according to the Supreme Court, non-violent First Amendment advocacy "coordinated with" or "under the direction of" a foreign group listed by the Secretary of State as "terrorist" is a crime. A thought crime, to be exact. This goes on while Obama speaks with great reverence for Nelson Mandela, who was officially defined as a terrorist by the U.S. government for many years.

12. As of 2011, Obama was seeking Congressional authority to compel internet service providers to make our internet records available to government investigators, so dissidents and protesters would be trackable at will, violating the 4th Amendment.

Tuesday, July 17, 2012

The Hill Poll: Majority of voters believe Obama has changed country for worse

By Sheldon Alberts
-
07/09/12 05:00 AM ET

Two-thirds of likely voters say President Obama has kept his
2008 campaign promise to change America — but it’s changed for the
worse, according to a sizable majority.
A new poll for The Hill
found 56 percent of likely voters believe Obama’s first term has
transformed the nation in a negative way, compared to 35 percent who
believe the country has changed for the better under his leadership.

The results signal broad voter unease with the direction the nation has taken under Obama’s leadership and present a

from the nytimes:

Published: July 17, 2012

WASHINGTON — The fiscal crisis for states will persist long after the
economy rebounds as states confront financial problems that include
rising health care costs, underfunded pensions, ignored infrastructure
needs, eroding revenues and expected federal budget cuts, according to a report issued here Tuesday by a task force of respected budget experts.

Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Helga
is the proprietor of a bar.
She realizes that virtually
all of her customers are
unemployed alcoholics and, as
such, can no longer afford to
patronize her bar. To solve
this problem she comes up with
a new marketing plan that
allows her customers to drink
now, but pay later.

Helga
keeps track of the drinks
consumed on a ledger, thereby
granting the customers'
loans.

Word
gets around about Helga's
"drink now, pay later"
marketing strategy and, as a
result, increasing numbers of
customers flood into Helga's
bar. Soon she has the largest
sales volume for any bar in
town.

By
providing her customers
freedom from immediate payment
demands Helga gets no
resistance when, at regular
intervals, she substantially
increases her prices for wine
and beer - the most consumed
beverages.

Consequently,
Helga's gross sales volumes
and paper profits increase
massively. A young and
dynamic vice-president at the
local bank recognizes that
these customer debts
constitute valuable future
assets and increases Helga's
borrowing limit. He sees no
reason for any undue concern,
since he has the debts of the
unemployed alcoholics as
collateral.

He
is rewarded with a six figure
bonus.

At
the bank's corporate
headquarters, expert traders
figure a way to make huge
commissions, and transform
these customer loans into
DRINKBONDS. These
"securities" are then bundled
and traded on international
securities markets.

Naive
investors don't really
understand that the securities
being sold to them as "AA
Secured Bonds" are really
debts of unemployed
alcoholics. Nevertheless, the
bond prices continuously climb
and the securities soon become
the hottest-selling items for
some of the nation's leading
brokerage houses.

The
traders all receive a six
figure bonus.

One
day, even though the bond
prices are still climbing, a
risk manager

at
the original local bank
decides that the time has come
to demand payment on the debts
incurred by the drinkers at
Helga's bar. He so informs
Helga. Helga then demands
payment from her alcoholic
patrons but, being unemployed
alcoholics, they cannot pay
back their drinking debts.
Since Helga cannot fulfill her
loan obligations she is forced
into bankruptcy. The bar
closes and Helga's 11
employees lose their jobs.

Overnight,
DRINKBOND prices drop by 90%.
The collapsed bond asset value
destroys the bank's liquidity
and prevents it from issuing
new loans, thus freezing
credit and economic activity
in the community.

The
suppliers of Helga's bar had
granted her generous payment
extensions and had invested
their firms' pension funds in
the BOND securities. They find
they are now faced with having
to write off her bad debt and
with losing over 90% of the
presumed value of the bonds.
Her wine supplier also claims
bankruptcy, closing the doors
on a family business that had
endured for three generations;
her beer supplier is taken
over by a competitor, who
immediately closes the local
plant and lays off 150
workers.

Fortunately
though, the bank, the
brokerage houses and their
respective executives are
saved and bailed out by a
multi-billion dollar
no-strings attached cash
infusion from the government.

They
all receive six a figure
bonus.

The
funds required for this
bailout are obtained by new
taxes levied on employed,
middle-class, non-drinkers
who've never been in Helga's
bar.

An employee who had worked at Amalgamated Security Systems
for twenty five years and was slated to receive his pension in two weeks was
accused of murdering his boss when he was threatened with being fired.

“ He endangered my life and that of my family by denying me
any means of support after years of faithful service. All I could do to defend
myself, my wife and my children was to stand my ground when my life was
threatened. I shot him in self defense. And I used an American made weapon to
do so.”

When asked if his boss was a dangerous black teenager
wearing a hoody, the man replied “ no, he was a scumbag middle aged white
bastard wearing a suit and tie” and then broke down in tears as he explained
that the “scumbag” had laughed at him, called his wife and children “dumb
working class pieces of shit”, and had advanced on him while holding a martini
glass in menacing fashion. “ I thought he was going to throw it in my face. I
had to defend myself, my honor and my integrity as a member of the company
staff serving faithfully for twenty five years. What else could I do? What
would you do?”

The NRA, the ACLU, the AFL , the Tea Party and the Green,
Democratic, Republican and Communist parties have all offered to pay his legal
expenses. All agreed that the man was not only exercising his right to keep and
bear arms, as enshrined in the most holy second amendment to the constitution,
but the right to stand his ground when his life was threatened, accordingto the most holy “stand your ground
when your life is threatened”laws
in many holy states.

The president, the secretary of state and the attorney
general released a joint statement that said:

“ uh, this is,
um, an unprecedented test for, uh, a law that while not officially an , um,
federal law, is, uh, most likely a right that most, um, Americans feel very
strongly about, and , um…” At this point the stenographer fell asleep, but it
is clear that this case will, um, set a precedent for, uh, this inability to
clearly articulate disease which has, um, gripped many who are part of or, um,
reporting on this, uh, government.

Legalienate urges its thousands of fans to gather the
family around and read that last paragraph out loud…it will make you all feel
presidential.

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

even making the wild assumption that any
biblical or torah or other tales told to people who told tales to other people
who continued telling tales until years later someone wrote an alleged account
of these tales were remotely based on actual material events ...so? this would
account for the treacherous, murderous garbage infesting our minds and bodies
now, centuries after these alleged tales of terror, deities, good people and
demons?

when we cannot believe what we see on a TV or
computer screen this minute, we are supposed to attach great meaning to what
was allegedly said and is still allegedly believed by people who may be
certifiable lunatics, as may be those who believe that they believe what they
believe and that is why people are being murdered all over the world, children
starve, the earth is being ravaged...because some dickhead believes in
cutting off foreskin, or the resurrection of Christ, or the parting of the red
sea?

can we get real, for just a moment, and take
off the biblical and torah garments, put on pants and dresses or slacks, and
take a look at what is going on around us this minute and realize that
interpretations and explanations of events range across the spectrum from
fascists to communists to democrats to islamist to jews to globalists to
nationalists to literate people and to stark raving lunatics - mostly in
major media - and stop seeking answers by examining what are called scriptures?

just find any such text and seek what you want
on any given page...it's likely to be there, subject to your
interpretation...much more important, and equally open to such analysis, is the
much more believable and understandable document we call a constitution,
infinitely more important than this biblical/torah-nical nonsense, and a far
more important pile of political bullshit which can be interpreted and analyzed
by any and every form of philosophy to indicate the master remains master and
the slaves, peasants, citizens, consumers remain without power...that's
important, the rest is unadulterated horseshit, except for defending freedom of
speech, which is right on...

the power of the west to destroy militarily and do mental
destruction though information control and disinformation must be
understood ,acknowledged and opposed, but we cannot do this by indulging in
what we might consider a more benign form of distortion or over-simplification...

for all the positive things accomplished by libya during the period of
ghaddafi's revolution, something cannot have been so perfect, ideal, democratic
and humanitarian as expressed by so many well meaning supporters, or the
country could not possibly have been a place where so many libyans were
screaming about lack of democracy, lack of equality, lack of freedom,
etc...many of them may have been propagandists, but a nation cannot fall, even
with outside intervention , if it has or had so much wonderfulness,
democracy,prosperity and equality...why was anybody in libya complaining about
anything at all if all this greatness existed, let alone be willing to
join with outside forces to destroy the government?

of course there are always elements who want more than others, but they have to
be numerous , or the supporters of a government have to be relatively helpless
in order to lose that governmental force, no matter how much outside wealth or
military power is employed...

the west taking over a country where there is no central rule, no well fed,
well educated population, no sense of democratic rights, is one thing...but if
libya had all these attributes, as so many go to great lengths to praise, why
did it all come apart without an invading army coming in but instead with a
native population doing so, however aided with outside help? we must be far
more critical of ourselves in our desire to create a new world and not simply
blame the old world for all that is wrong...we need to face reality and correct
our mistakes - and there must have been many made in libya - not simply praise
what we believe or have as almost religious faith that disregards the material
reality...

russia had a revolution that lasted seventy years in which a power - not simply
a royal figurehead of a tsar - was stripped and a totally different society was
built, one that transformed the lives of hundreds of millions of people in a
nation larger than any on earth, and that revolution collapsed in a relatively
bloodless operation, partly because of a generation of western assaults both
physical and mental, but also because of its shortcomings in establishing real
democratic power among the people, all the while it extolled itself as a truly
democratic nation because - and here what is said about libya can be repeated
endlessly - all were employed, all were educated, none were homeless, all were
fed, and so on...yet, they failed, and they were a world power, not just
militarily but economically and even imperially, having many nations
subject to their leadership and rule...how can anyone truly believe that libya
was a flawless place in which all were equal and democratic when so many
libyans were not only of a different mind, but actually hated the same leader
beloved as almost a god by others?

these are serious problems to deal with and cannot be put aside simply because
the west and some libyans may be corrupt, greedy or egotistical...if there is
to be a new world, not just in libya, old ways of deifying and/or demonizing
leaders must be dumped, and definitions of things like democracy - which never
existed in ancient greece where it was supposed to have originated nor does it
exist in the usa and certainly did not exist in libya - must change and become
definable in material reality and not just in the minds of those who think it
means "my side rules and not yours and since we are better than you, that
is democracy" or some similar gross over simplification...

i look forward to soon hearing and reading some serious discussion of the
imperfections, the mistakes, the negative things about libya that played a role
in the fall of a forty year experiment to create a better reality in a
relatively tiny nation...we cannot change the world by having a nice little
commune somewhere and we certainly cannot change the world if we can't even
create a tiny commune of equality and democracy...we have much to learn about
the world we actually live in, in order to change it...

Tuesday, July 3, 2012

Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV
A working class hero is something to be…

John Lennon

The
robber baron and the rock and roll poet expressed sentiments about the same
social reality from radically different perspectives. Profit and Loss
capitalism has enabled many recipients of crumbs from the banquet tables of the
rich to enjoy the applied label of middle class given them by consciousness
controllers in politics and media. But present realities find the religion,
sex, tv and other consumer products less available to cloud minds and fill
bodies under the delusion of equality and the cruel reality spoken of by the
robber baron. That reality needs to be confronted by a united class and no
longer tolerated by a divided humanity, now more so than ever.

As the
global crisis causes national book juggling on a daily basis to maintain order,
and that of international banking on a near hourly schedule, it becomes more apparent that the algorithmic
accountants for the rich are operating to the detriment of most members of the
race. Problems supposedly at the root of a crumbling financial structure are
seen by minority profiteers as government’s profligate spending on people , terrifying foreign threats that call for
expanded wars , and other lies perpetuated by mind managers to cover the gross
injustice that is reducing more of humanity to debt servitude and abject
poverty while the planet itself is threatened in all its life support systems .
This happens as shrinking segments of the population increase their enormous
wealth at phenomenal speed, destroying more of the social and natural
environment as they do so and patting themselves on the back for being such
masterful and benign dominators of life.

Creatures
of no observable skills or special talents amass billions of dollars and
perform no useful work at all but actually bring about cultural and ecological
devastation for which they are rewarded with more tax payer dollars. Economists
too dumb to see the crisis predicted by many critics still wisely advise with
ancient notions of a free market religion, supply and demand curves, and the “creative
destruction” which does away with
what they find useless - jobs for working people – and produces more profits
for what they find divine – capitalists. These servants of a religious philosophy
masked as secular finance call for total assault on the public sector in a form of national masturbation; by
focused obsession on the economy’s private parts. The loss of jobs bring lower
employment costs for the ruling minority and higher social costs to the working
majority who still have some form of incomes and pay taxes to keep rulers rich
and not allow poor people to drop dead in the streets. As they expend more for weapons,
consumer goods and security products to protect themselves from the alienated
who are alleged to threaten them from below , they are distracted from noticing
the tiny group laughing at them from above while it dumps garbage on their
heads.

This
does not describe 19th century reality but the present condition of
a 21st century rushing backward for most while the minority at the
top lavishes wealth on itself by robbing humanity’s future. A fast growing universal demand for
democracy is slowly changing things despite interference and misguidance from
rulers and their hired help, though it must speed up if we are to have a long range future. Some among
the many reasons why:

The
incredible arrogance of western powers, especially the U.S. and Israel, insisting
that Iran suspend activities – none of which exist - to create nuclear weapons –
none of which it has – while the USA, the only nation to slaughter thousands
with nuclear weapons, and Israel , armed with hundreds of nukes which they
demand remain unmentioned in a global holocaust of silence, and Iran, not
Israel, calls for a nuclear free middle east. Whether dubbed colossal chutzpah, testiculo grandioso
or massive balls, this combination of breathtaking gall with microscopic brains
endangers most of the world, beginning with Iran and the middle east.

The
same imperial master race/chosen people syndicate calls a conference on the
future of Syria, but neither Syria nor neighbor Iran are allowed to participate
in the discussion. Does that imply elephant testicles? Dinosaur balls? Gigantic
gonads? Is there any fitting trash talk to cover this kind of pinhead, pea
brained dementia?

Possibly
so, but what can we call the urge for what is named austerity, meaning cuts in
programs for the most helpless in society so that the most wealthy can make more
money and possibly, hopefully, prayerfully , or when the drugs kick in, then invest
in creating jobs for them? That’s if the economic witch doctors, mullahs,
priests and rabbis don’t decide that creative destruction would be better,
thank you. How do you make fun of this in a way that can drown out the cries of
those who suffer while this madness continues? Whether they are in pain from
hunger, loneliness, despair at the bombs falling on their heads, or the
countless other horrors that
billions suffer while millions are confused into incurring more debt and paying
for war while thousands smile as their servants deposit more millions in the
bank for them. And that’s not all, for the moment.

Weather
irregularities ranging from heat waves to cold snaps to drenching rains and foul
air are written off as typical acts of nature having nothing to do with what
most of science has called climate change. While this pop title may be a
trivialization of the issue, most responsible investigators from what is called
the scientific community – a branch of material religious faith generally more
reliable than snake dancing and prayer - are treating this as a serious threat
to the future of the human race, while profiteers seek ways to make money by
transforming old garbage into new sewage and calling it a green revolution. Not
to worry folks, private profits will take care of everything. They will entail,
of course and as always , much greater losses in order to create those profits,
but as long as our rulers can languish in luxury they may leisurely invest in
something that will eventually bring us jobs. Like maybe another war.

Prevailing
wisdom seems an oxymoron as it applies to ruling power, its politicians and its
media. But expanding electronic methods of selling more consumer waste have
also created a contradictory method of communication that the imperial regime
is trying desperately to control, but at only limited success. Past populations
could be kept murdering one another and drugged by religion, sex and tv when
they weren’t directly doing so, but present distractions are too numerous and
fast to be totally controlled by any authority. It is trying, desperately and
with bloody efficiency, as it murders with robots , entraps with technology and
relies on its smaller but more faithful captive class of professional
indentured servants. But the tendency of more humans to say “enough” seems
apparent.

The escapist ploys still available by which
to keep workers killing themselves when not being captivated by media or
entrapped by newer versions of religion, sex and tv are more prevalent than
ever. They can go anywhere and dull minds 24 hours a day, but they are not only
suitable to listen to or watch; they can also enable people to broadcast their
own messages, and while most of those can seem all too personal, the tribe of
humanity is using them socially and coming closer together as the problems get
worse. That growing togetherness offers hope for ultimate democratic action to
take control of a social environment that demands real transformation of the
race and its possibilities. Working class members of the human majority don’t
all need to be individual heroes but they could take social inspiration from
these closing quotes. Stay tuned.

“The
whole idea of compassion is based on a keen awareness of the interdependence of
all these living beings, which are all part of one another and all involved in
one another.”
-Thomas Merton

An individual has not started living until he or she
can rise above the narrow confines of his or her individualistic concerns to
the broader concerns of all humanity.”
-Martin Luther King, Jr.

Monday, July 2, 2012

The candidate will also be visiting nations of ancestral origin of the other 98% of Americans, with a special emphasis on Mexico, Kenya, Puerto Rico,Italy, Russia, Germany, the British Isles, the Scandinavian Peninsula, Brazil, Argentina, El Salvador and others soon to be announced.